Azure Updates: DNS Private Resolver; SFTP; Virtual WAN; Open source tools

Principal product manager Sergio Figueiredo announced the general availability of DNS Private Resolver. The offering is intended to provide high availability at a lower cost than traditional IaaS VMs. Microsoft provides Private DNS for VNets to manage and resolve domain names in a VNet, and Public DNS for domains hosted on Azure’s global network. Private Resolver is aimed at querying DNS private zones for on-prem environments.

Product manager Yash Lunagaria encouraged customers to use SFTP support for Blob Storage to create unified data lakes. The generally available capabilities are a managed and scalable SFTP service to manage file transfers. “The addition of SFTP to Azure Blob Storage, our object storage platform, expands on our vision of multi-protocol access and enables you to run your SFTP workloads with minimal management effort and low infrastructure costs. SFTP support, combined with protocol support for NFS 3.0, Blob REST, and Azure Data Lake Storage, helps customers migrate their applications without any changes,” Lunagaria wrote. So far, major companies like AT&T, Kraft Heinz, and SNCF Réseau are using the offering to migrate data.

Microsoft shared a variety of security and observability options for customers. The Azure DDoS IP Protection SKU is available in preview to counter the growing frequency of serious DDoS attacks. DDoS IP Protection is targeted to SMBs, with L3/L4 automatic attack detection, mitigation, and flow log collection,  as well as integration with Firewall Manager, Defender for Cloud, and Sentinel. Customers only pay for the public IP resources they protect, although Microsoft indicates that DDoS Network Protection is the recommended offering for enterprises.

For monitoring scenarios, Microsoft continues to expand Network Watcher. Designed to monitor, visualize, and troubleshoot network issues across Azure public cloud and hybrid cloud, Network Watcher now includes a new topology experience spanning multiple subscriptions, resource groups, and regions, with VNet deep dive options, and Monitor Agent Connection Monitor.

In conjunction with the Open Compute Project summit, Microsoft announced Caliptra open source root of trust.